ELIZABETH BRUENIG: Laura Ingraham gets an economics lesson

Sunday

Apr 8, 2018 at 2:01 AM

The power of capital.

The fate of conservative pundit Laura Ingraham's Fox News show is uncertain after a series of advertisers pulled their ads. Companies either removed their ads or canceled plans to buy slots after Ingraham made a nasty quip about Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg being rejected from a handful of colleges. On Twitter, Hogg called on Ingraham's advertisers to withdraw their support, and, perhaps thanks to the persuasion of his 738,000 Twitter followers, they have.

The swiftness with which Ingraham has found herself in dire straits has left some perturbed. Commentators have raised concerns about the fairness of boycotts and the threat they pose to free speech; some conservatives have also attempted to initiate counter-boycotts of the companies that have parted ways with Ingraham.

Yet it's not quite right to classify these advertisers' decisions as a straightforward boycott. In the context of Ingraham's long career in right-wing media, sniping at a teenager over college admissions is perhaps one of her less obscene stunts, which suggests it's unlikely that these companies suddenly grew a collective conscience. It's more likely that Ingraham is the victim of a capital strike, when investors withdraw or withhold investments en masse because they've determined that potential hazards outweigh potential gains.

Remember: Capital is capital; it is not your friend. Conservatives are learning this the hard way, and those on the left shouldn't forget it, even when companies happen to decide the best bet is the morally correct one.

But the fact that we can't rely on capital to do much besides look out for its own interests presents more than comeuppance for conservatives. It also foregrounds a key imbalance in our politics: While capital can strike on a whim and effectively shut down a political program or initiative, labor's ability to similarly assert itself in the public sphere is comparatively limited.

There are no regulations or laws preventing or even restricting capital strikes. This means that the social and political aspirations of capital always have an effective instrument on hand. But the same can't be said for labor. All over the United States, euphemistically titled right-to-work laws strangle organized labor. Then there are anti-strike laws.

Normally, this capital-financed onslaught against labor is interpreted as capital just doing what it does: trying to squeeze maximal profits out of business transactions, workers be damned. And it is that. But in light of the power of capital strikes in public life, it should also be understood as something else: an effort to limit the ability of labor to exert the same kind of control over politics and discourse as capital itself does. It adds a dimension of social and political imbalance, in other words, to the already-existing material imbalance between capital and labor in a capitalist society.

Some workers have overcome this imbalance to a degree by virtually ignoring anti-strike laws, such as the West Virginia teachers whose successful wildcat strike has already inspired a string of hopeful labor actions in other red states. To narrow the gap further will require either better laws or more strategic lawlessness, at least where advancing the interests of labor are concerned. This might rankle capital, and it should. But remember: Capital is not your friend. Just ask Laura Ingraham.

Bruenig is a Washington Post columnist.

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